"I was a real ham as a child. I'd insist on dressing up as a cowboy whenever the family went out for dinner. In high school, I was a menace. I'd fake nose bleeds and fainting spells to panic my teachers."
Alan Wray Tudyk (born March 16, 1971) is an American actor and voice actor known for his roles as Hoban "Wash" Washburne in the space western television series Firefly and movie Serenity and Wat in A Knight's Tale. He co-stared on the ABC sitcom Suburgatory also had a starring role in the film 42 as Ben Chapman and voiced significant roles in the Disney animated films Wreck-It Ralph, Frozen, and Big Hero 6. He's appeared in every Disney film since Wreck-It Ralph, in fact, and commonly voices characters who play the role of the Red Herring.
Primarily known for his comedic roles, he's made more of a mark with villainous roles in recent years. A good example would be the psychotic serial killer Carl "Alpha" Craft from Dollhouse, where Tudyk subverted the Wash persona that most Whedon fans best knew him for.
Selected filmography:
- Patch Adams as Everton (1998)
- 28 Days as Gerhardt (2000)
- Frasier as Todd Peterson (2000)
- A Knight's Tale as Wat (2001)
- Ice Age as Lenny (2002)
- Ice Age: The Meltdown as Bear (2006)
- Firefly as Hoban "Wash" Washburne (2002–2003)
- DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story as Steve the Pirate (2004)
- I, Robot as Sonny (2004)
- Serenity as Hoban "Wash" Washburne (2005)
- Arrested Development as Pastor Veal (2005; 2013)
- 3:10 to Yuma as Doc Potter (2007)
- Knocked Up as Jack (2007)
- Death at a Funeral as Simon, very convincingly playing an Englishman (2007)
- Dollhouse as Alpha (2009–2010)
- Halo 3: ODST as Michael "Mickey" Crespo (2009)
- Batman: The Brave and the Bold as Barry Allen (The Flash) (2010–2011)
- Young Justice as Green Arrow (2010–2013)
- Tucker & Dale vs. Evil as Tucker (2010)
- Transformers: Dark of the Moon as Dutch (2011)
- Suburgatory as Dr. Noah Werner (2011–2014)
- Wreck-It Ralph as King Candy/Turbo (2012)
- Ralph Breaks the Internet as KnowsMore (2018)
- 42 as Ben Chapman (2013)
- Injustice as Green Arrow
- Injustice: Gods Among Us (2013)
- Injustice 2 as Green Arrow (2017)
- Justified as Elias Marcos (2014)
- Frozen as the Duke of Weselton (2013)
- Frozen II as the Duke of Weselton (archive footage), a Guard, a Northuldra Leader, and an Arendellian Soldier (2019)
- Big Hero 6 as Alistair Krei (2014)
- Justice League: War as Superman (2014)
- Star vs. the Forces of Evil as King River Butterfly and Ludo (2015–2019)
- Con Man as Wray Nerely (2015-2017)
- Trumbo as Ian McLellan Hunter (2015)
- Oddball as Bradley Slater (2015)
- Zootopia as Duke Weaselton (2016)
- Zootopia+ as Duke Weaselton note (2022)
- Moana as Heihei the chicken (2016)
- Star Wars as the droid K-2SO
- Rogue One (2016)
- Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire (2018)
- Powerless as Van Wayne (2017)
- Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency as Mr. Priest (2017)
- The Tick as Dangerboat (2017)
- Deadpool 2 as a redneck who gets tased by Cable (2018)
- Doom Patrol as Eric Morden/Mr. Nobody (2019)
- Harley Quinn as The Joker, Clayface, and Calendar Man (2019-)
- Aladdin as Iago (2019)
- Final Space as Todd H. Watson (2019)
- Resident Alien as Dr. Harry Vanderspeigle (2021-)
- Raya and the Last Dragon as Tuk Tuk (2021)
- Devil May Care as The Devil (2021)
- Batman: The Audio Adventures as Alfred (2021)
- Encanto as Pico the toucan (2021)
- Transformers Earthspark as Optimus Prime (2022-)
- Disenchanted as The Talking Scroll (2022)
- Strange World as The Narrator, Radio Announcer 1, Pilot (2022)
- Peter Pan & Wendy as Mr. Darling (2023)
- Wish as Valentino the Goat (2023)
Tropes associated with him:
- Celebrity Resemblance: To Gerrit Graham, due to their beaky and tall appearances (not to mention how Tudyk's default hairstyle resembles Graham's from the mid-1980s to today), their character actor abilities to play disparate comedic and serious roles and being associated with Disney more then once (Graham himself had voice roles in The Little Mermaid (1989) and Gargoyles, had writing credit on the short cartoon The Prince and the Pauper and had made his early acting debut at age eight in a Detroit Art Institute stage production of Winnie the Pooh, which would later become a well-known Disney-owned franchise). Also, both he and Graham had a role in their resumes as a comedic zombie with Tudyk being the The Other Darrin for Nathan Fillion's Gary on Santa Clarita Diet to Graham's Bud the C.H.U.D.
- Classically-Trained Extra: Invoked when voicing the chicken in Moana as he jokes, in between doing the sounds, about the fact that he went to Julliard.
- Doing It for the Art: While he hasn't been in any particularly bad films, he's definitely had less impressive roles; he played a non-anthropomorphic chicken in Moana and a random redneck in Deadpool 2. It would have been easy to phone those in, but he says his policy is to give every role his all, and it shows.
- In Deadpool 2 he had about a minute of screentime, a grand total of six lines, and was barely recognizable, but he still managed to be memorable simply because he's clearly paying close attention to his friend's bizarre rant about toilet paper.
- The director of Encanto revealed
that Tudyk schooled the creators on their inaccurate toucan noises, saying their existing noises were actually from some species of parrot, did a lot of research on actual toucan noises, and spent hours in the recording booth testing toucan noises and "responding" to English-language dialogue in toucan.
- Fake Brit: His English accent in Death at a Funeral is very convincing. Though it does momentarily vanish at "Eight hours of this?!"
- He wasn't always as convincing: as Wat in A Knight's Tale (admittedly one of his earliest roles) his English accent was serviceable but wobbled a lot from scene to scene. Since then he's gotten a lot better.
- Large Ham: He can be very theatrical when he needs to be.
- Man of a Thousand Voices:
- His Disney roles alone show he has an impressive vocal range, from King Candy, who sounds like Ed Wynn's Mad Hatter, to the Duke of Weselton, who sounds like a British Steve Buscemi impression. He's even voiced a chicken.
- Outside of his roles, he's shown in press interviews for Rogue One that he can do a startlingly accurate impression of his costar Diego Luna, slightly halting Mexican-accented English and all.
- Pigeonholed Voice Actor:
- At least in terms of his Disney roles, where he tends to play older, slimy, petty villains. This trend continues with his casting in Zootopia as Duke Weaselton. Averted in Moana, where he voices the animal sidekick. Then again, this seems to be a new type of pigeonhole, as he went on to voice animal sidekicks in Raya and the Last Dragon and Encanto.
- Also, being put in Disney stuff in general — after five consecutive roles, he's effectively become the John Ratzenberger of the Disney Animated Canon.
- Playing Against Type:
- On the other hand, he provides the voice of Heihei the Chicken from Moana, who is the film's Plucky Comic Relief animal sidekick.
- Tudyk also features in Transformers Earthspark as freaking OPTIMUS PRIME. Let's face it, nothing says this trope more than a guy known for villain, comedy or side roles playing the Big Good.
- Throw It In:
- According to Giancarlo Volpe, he was prone to this as Ludo.
- In Rogue One, he (K-2SO) improvised smacking Cassian in the face ("And that's a fresh one if you mouth off again."). You can see Diego Luna corpsing while he hides his face behind his hand while pretending he's holding his hurt jaw.
- What Could Have Been:
- He auditioned for the part of Michael Scott on The Office before Steve Carell was cast.
- He was the original actor for Rafe in Uncharted 4: A Thief's End but left the project when his contract was voided when the original director, Amy Henning, quit.
"I am a leaf on the wind — watch how I soar."
